


Sacrament

by anotetofollow



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Priests, Catholic Guilt, Catholicism, Church Sex, F/M, Finger Sucking, Forbidden Love, Improper Use of Catholic Rituals, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Pining, Semi-Public Sex, really telling on myself with this one huh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:07:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25024405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotetofollow/pseuds/anotetofollow
Summary: Blackwall lets a beat of silence pass. “And the nature of these thoughts?”“Impure.” He can imagine the way her mouth curls into a smile. “Decidedly impure.”
Relationships: Blackwall/Female Inquisitor, Blackwall/Female Lavellan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 52





	Sacrament

**Author's Note:**

> i have no excuse for this, frankly

_i. contrition_

She arrives in March, as spring does. The cherry blossom outside the vestry is coming into bloom, green buds splitting to pink as the days grow longer, warmer. There are a dozen groups that use the community room in rotation, too many for Blackwall to remember; classes and support circles, reading clubs, coffee mornings, each interchangeable with the last. They lay out the plastic chairs and formica tables and drink gallons of weak tea and forget to take the bins out, leaving stacks of photocopied leaflets by the noticeboard to mark their passing. The church can no longer afford to be selective regarding who pays the hire fee, and so there are secular groups among the faithful. Often the latter turn their nose up at the former, making stiff-lipped complaints to the administrator every fortnight or so. These are filed and ignored, each little slip of passive-aggression gathering dust in a drawer.

Blackwall watches all this from his office. It was a notion of his predecessor, this open-door policy, this decision to be present among the flock at all times, and Blackwall has not been here long enough to make changes without upsetting the more zealous among them. In truth he would prefer privacy, to not be constantly distracted by the clucking of church volunteers, ever harassing him with questions about the combi-boiler, but new to this parish and only two years out of the seminary it seems best not to argue.

So it is that he is sitting behind his desk the first time she appears, dragging folding tables across the linoleum floor of the community room. Curls tumbling to her shoulders, paint-spatter freckles across the high bridge of her nose, arms bare to the spring warmth. He watches her for a moment as she positions the chairs into a loose circle, wondering which group she belongs to. Nothing holy, from the way the volunteers look at her. When she is finished with her preparations she stands up, wipes the sheen of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, turns to survey the room. As her gaze moves past the office she catches his eye for a moment, smiles. There is nothing reserved or polite in it. It shows teeth. Before he can return it she is looking elsewhere, busy filling tea urns for whatever visitors are about to arrive. As he resumes his work Blackwall tries not to think about the way her cheeks dimpled when she smiled, the smooth line of her clavicle above her dress. The vocation does not exempt him from such thoughts; only from acting upon them.

She comes twice a week after that, Mondays and Thursdays. There is something about her presence, something larger than those around her. Blackwall always knows when she is in the building, often before he has seen her. It is a discomfort, almost, a dull heat at the nape of his neck, beneath his collar. Every now and again she’ll glance at him while she works, eyes dark and curious when they meet his. Too often.

One day there’s a knock on the doorframe and he looks up to find her standing there, knuckles still resting against the wood. Her hair is tied back today, the column of her throat unadorned and perfect. There is the smallest frown on her face, the slightest crease between her brows.

“Can’t find the key for the cleaning cupboard,” she says by way of introduction. “Everyone else has gone home.”

“Right,” he says, getting to his feet. “Hang on.”

He fetches the spare key and unlocks the door for her, conscious of her eyes on him all the time. She looks at him like he’s a puzzle she’s on the verge of solving, arms folded loosely over her chest as she watches him fumble with the keychain.

“What group are you with?” he asks, just to have something to say.

“Debt cafe,” she says, which means nothing to him. “Used to be at the community centre round the corner but they shut us down.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, well.” She shrugs, the motion sending her hair falling back across her shoulder. “Now we’re stuck here.”

Blackwall senses something accusatory in the statement. “I take it you’re not pleased with the venue.”

“No, I’m not,” she says mildly. “It puts people off. All the church stuff.” The briefest glance to his collar. “No offence.”

“None taken. It’s not for everyone.”

“People think they’ll come here and you’ll try and convert them. God knows some of the volunteers are trying.” She winces at the small blasphemy. “Sorry.”

“Contrary to popular opinion it’s not my job to convert everyone who walks through the door.”

“Well that’s reassuring.” Her words are husky, desert-dry. “I’d make a terrible Catholic.” A glint in the dangerous pools of her eyes, white teeth pressed to the curve of her lip.

She stops to see him sometimes, after that, when she’s finished work for the day. Their conversations are never long, but over time he comes to learn a little about her. Tanith has lived here longer than he has, her understanding of this community far deeper than his own, and their discussions are often enlightening. They drink freeze-dried coffee at the folding tables or, later, the rich brew she brings from home.

Blackwall finds himself looking forward to these talks, brief as they are. She challenges him. Holding no particular reverence for his vocation she speaks plainly about the church and its role in the community, her own reservations and interests, how she thinks things could be better done. It is, for want of a better word, refreshing. Most of the feedback he receives on a day-to-day basis comes from the blue-rinsed parishioners who have been here since the dawn of time. But there are other challenges, too. They are in the sharp angles of her wrists, her gently sloping calves, the pink temptation of her mouth. She sits languid and cross-legged on the hard plastic chairs, laughter forever playing across her face. There is no doubt in his mind that she knows precisely what she is doing, and takes no small amount of pleasure in it. At night his reconciliations consume more time than ever, growing longer with each day that passes.

The carpet of petals in the vestry garden is thick and pale on the day she brings the cherries. A punnet of them, from her own garden, a purple so deep they are almost black. She presents them to him at the end of her shift, coming round to his side of the desk and almost sitting on its surface. A new development. Tanith puts the plump fruit in her mouth and plucks off the stem, chewing thoughtfully. A moment later she spits the stone into her palm, then places it deliberately onto the polished wood of the desk.

“You not having one?” she says, arching an eyebrow at him. “I brought them for you.”

There is a second question in her words, one that doesn’t bear thinking about, and he eats a cherry just to keep from speaking. The juice spills sharp and sweet across his tongue, soft flesh with brittle heart inside. Blackwall takes the stone from his mouth and places it beside hers.

“Here,” she says. “You’ve got something.”

Tanith reaches down and runs her thumb over his lips, the motion so sudden and careless that he doesn’t have time to stop her. She smiles, the pad of her thumb lingering at the corner of his mouth, her mount of venus pressed to his chin. Watches his eyes, closely. He can barely move for the nearness of her. There is a scent in the air when she comes close, like burned sugar and citrus, like benzoin ashes in the thurible. The sheer, clumsy symbolism of it is almost ridiculous. Fruit and garden all in one. He wonders if she planned it that way.

Before he can respond she is leaving, shouldering her bag and waving goodbye from the doorframe. Her swift exit throws him off balance a second time, leaves him reeling. He might have it imagined the whole thing, were it not for the pair of cherry pits still sitting on top of his desk. Like a promise. Like a threat.

_ii. disclosure_

He knows her by her scent, the orange-peel sweetness that drifts in through the slot of light. It’s warm inside the booth, the early-summer heat felt twice-over behind the layers of polished wood and heavy velvet. She shouldn’t be here. He has allowed her to go too far, let her come too close, his silence a tacit permission. It is too easy to reassure himself that there is nothing troublesome in talking, even when he knows that it has never simply been this. His mind moves to her too often, to the light brush of her fingers on his shoulder, the creasing at the corner of her eyes when she smiles. He knows that people whisper about them.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” she says. “It has been… twenty nine years since my last confession.” Tanith speaks formally, though there is no hiding the laughter behind her words.

Due to the nature of the practice he cannot acknowledge her, cannot ask her why she is here when she does not believe. He cannot even speak her name. Here she might say anything she pleases, and he is duty-bound not to repeat it when they see one another in the outside world.

“Go on,” he says, when she does not continue.

“Well, where to start?” A long sigh. “I have quite a lot of sins to catch up on, I imagine.”

“Say what you came here to say,” he says, letting a brittle edge enter his voice.

“I don’t know the names of them,” she says quietly. “I’ve been thinking about someone. Someone I shouldn’t.”

Blackwall lets a beat of silence pass. “And the nature of these thoughts?”

“Impure.” He can imagine the way her mouth curls into a smile. “Decidedly impure.”

His traitorous flesh responds to the intimation, quickening the beat of his heart, heating his blood. It was one thing for her to suggest it with glances, with brief, chaste touches, but it is entirely another to hear it said aloud. He has desired her from the first time he laid eyes on her. There is barely a day goes past when he does not think of holding her, tasting her, feeling her close. He came to the calling late, and has not entirely forgotten such pleasures. These have been the contents of his own confessions for the last few weeks.

“Is that all?” he says, half-hoping that she’ll leave, half desperate for her to stay.

“No.”

Tanith reaches through the latticed aperture separating them, her delicate fingers slipping easily through the gaps. Before Blackwall knows what he is doing he has pressed the tips of his fingers to hers. It is the first time he has felt her skin against his since she brushed her thumb across his lips that day in his office, and this transgression alone is enough to make him light-headed. The heat, he tells himself, only the heat.

“I touch myself sometimes,” she says, her tone effortlessly casual. “After I see him. Start wondering what it would be like to kiss him. Think about undressing him, seeing what he looks like under all that… cloth.” There’s a sound from her cubicle like she’s shifting position, and when she speaks again her voice has changed. It’s breathier, higher. “Sometimes I don’t wait to get home. Just fuck myself right there in the bathroom after my shift, wishing it was him.”

He can’t help but picture it, as she must have known he would. Tanith locked in the bathroom stall, a handful of feet from his office, skirt rucked around her hips as she slips her fingers inside herself, the grim-faced parishioners shuffling past the door. Blackwall imagines the arch of her bare foot braced against the porcelain sink, sees her pinching her nipples through her shirt, silently mouthing his name. All additions of his own, nothing she has given him. No sin of hers. He leans into her touch, putting the slightest pressure on her fingers as his other hand reaches downwards. Just to ease the ache there, just a little, enough to keep his thoughts straight. He is painfully hard already, straining against the fabric of he trousers, and he can’t help but let out a ragged breath as he runs the flat of his hand along the length of his cock.

She laughs, actually _laughs_ , the sound high and bright and delighted. Then it transforms into something else, a tiny gasp of her own. Knowing she is there, mere inches away, teasing herself behind the partition, is maddening. Maddening and sweet and dreadful and perfect.

“Do you want me to stop?” she says, quietly.

“No.”

Gravity, full knowledge, complete consent. Enough to tip the scales to mortal sin, enough to cut him off from deliverance entire. He will regret this later, he knows, will have to repent for it, but right then it is all he can do not to open the door between them.

“I want you,” she says.

Blackwall grits his teeth. “I can’t.”

“You could.” Her voice is heavy with desire. “You could have anything. Anything.”

Such a wealth of temptation in that single word. His hand is fumbling at his belt now, undoing the zip, grasping at his cock. He moves his hips slowly, feels his breath catch in his throat. The knot of tension sitting low in his belly growing tighter. Her fingertips burn against his, skin impossibly soft.

“Tell me you don’t want this,” she said. “Tell me.”

Blackwall opens his mouth to lie and cannot. There is too much truth in his body now, such a weight of need that his tongue will not deny it. His head is full of heat, of citrus, of her. The sounds escaping her throat have changed now, sharp, wanton little mewls of pleasure. They heighten his own arousal, make him sick with it. He can feel his collar damp with sweat where it touches the back of his neck. Inside the confessional the heat has grown almost unbearable, the air sweet and syrup-thick.

Tanith speaks between breaths. “Tell me what you do want, then.”

“Let me taste you.”

An obvious answer. It is all he has wanted to do from the moment he saw her, when she flashed that white smile across the room. And later, when she leaned against his desk sucking flesh from cherry stones, when he would have given up his place in heaven to part her thighs and bury his tongue in her cunt.

Tanith withdraws her fingers from the partition, and when she slips them back through they are slick, shining in the low light. He has to stand to reach her. One hand against the wall for purchase, the other wrapped around his shaft, he leans down to suck her fingers clean. She tastes like wine, like salt, like rain. He licks every drop from her skin, moaning into her knuckles, showing this task more devotion than he has ever given to his calling. Through the lattice he sees her all in diamonds; the tilt of her chin, the flushed swell of her chest, the raised peak of her knee.

“Say my name,” she breathes. “Say it.”

He does, his lips caressing the syllables as they tumble forth. She strokes her fingers over the angles of his face, anointing him as he speaks, petal-light and tender. Blackwall leans his forehead against the wall for fear of fainting, speaks her name like a litany as he thrusts into his fist. It has been years since he has been this close to another person, but in that moment the wall that separates them feels a mile thick. He has already committed the worst of sins, has already broken that covenant. There is a certain, perverse freedom in it, in knowing that he is far enough from absolution that he can fall a little further.

She comes in a tumble of profanity, her nails digging hard into his cheek. That small slice of pain among the pleasure is enough to tip him over the edge. His chest heaves, her name dances on his tongue, he spills, unspools like thread, loses himself, sweet flesh and bitter peel. Spots of light behind his eyes, and music too.

Before she pulls her hand back Tanith runs her thumb over his lips once more, as she did the first time she ever touched him. Then she is gone, a blur behind the lattice and the door closed behind her. Blackwall sinks onto the bench, trying to catch his breath. Guilt washes over him like a wave, that grey mantle of knowing that settles itself over all things. He is not fit to offer anyone forgiveness. He can barely absolve himself.

The air still smells of her. His lips still taste of her. It is as close to holy as he has ever felt.

_iii. satisfaction_

He is snuffing out the candles on the altar when she arrives. Footsteps light but deliberate, muffled against the carpet running up the aisle. Blackwall looks up to the altarpiece, to the crucifix, tries to find some strength in it. It has been a month since he last saw her. After that day in the confessional he moved his work into the vestry, where their paths would not cross. Many were unhappy with this change of arrangements, but he cares little for their opinions. Better to keep his distance. Better to put distance between them, than risk another fall.

But she is here now, he hears her on the stairs, smells her skin. He does not turn around. In the weeks since he has last seen Tanith the details of her have grown hazy, and he would rather not be reminded. Vague temptations are easier to resist.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she says, her voice quiet. “Where did you go?”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“You should have locked the door.” A single step closer. “Look at me.”

He draws a slow breath. “I can’t.”

“I’m not leaving until you do.”

“Then you’ll be waiting a long time.”

She takes hold of his arm then, fingers digging into his flesh, drags him around to face her. Her mouth is a thin line of anger, green eyes hard as she stares into his. The hollow of her throat, the freckle below her lip. So rarely has she stood this close.

“You’re avoiding me,” she says. It is not a question.

“It’s for the best.” His words come out short, halting. “For both of us.”

“You don’t get to decide what’s best for me.”

“I’m no good for you, Tanith.”

“How would you know?” Her fingers are still tight around his arm, sharp nails pressing through his shirt. “How will you know if you never try?”

“You know it’s not that simple.” Blackwall can barely form the sounds. Too focused on the whorl of her ear, the curls falling across the bare slope of her shoulder. “I wish it was.”

“It can be.”

She steps forward, reaches a hand to the side of his face. The other moves from his arm to his neck, fingertips running gently beneath his collar. Her body is almost flush to his, the warmth of her profane.

“Explain it to me,” she said. “Why create a world full of pleasure and then deny it to the people who follow you? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Blackwall has been thinking on this very question all through the turning of the season. He has drawn up elegant responses, logical counterarguments, and every one of them turns to ash in his mouth when he looks down at her. She stands barely to his shoulder, and has to arch up onto her tiptoes to reach him. Still, there is nothing frail or fragile about her. Her jaw is set, her hands unshaking where they meet his skin. If there is to be a battle of wills he will not emerge victorious. Tanith is immovable as mountains, he as weak as smoke.

“I’m not going to kiss you,” she says. “I’m just going to stand here. The rest is up to you.”

Cruel, clever trick. Putting the burden of choice onto him, letting the sin be his to make. Tanith runs her thumb over his lips, for the third time since he met her. It is feather-light, barely a touch at all, but it is enough to break him. 

He bends to meet her, mouth clumsy with forgetting, teeth sharp enough to draw blood. Tanith parts her lips and breathes a curse against his tongue, fingers tangling in his hair. It is better than he imagined it, and worse too, the knowledge of his transgression settling like a millstone around his neck. But even that is not enough to deter him, to keep him from clutching at her waist, the meat of her thighs, to stop him lifting her onto the altar and kissing her brow, her eyelids, her throat.

Tanith lifts her hips to pull off her underwear as he fumbles with the buttons of her shirt, half-tearing them in his haste. He cups her breasts in his hands, her skin the softest thing he has felt in years, takes a nipple into his mouth and sucks on it hungrily. She cries out then, high and sharp, her fingernails clawing at the nape of his neck. Blackwall draws slow circles with his tongue, savouring the way her flesh hardens beneath his ministrations. His vows are already broken, the damage already done. There is nothing to be done but give himself over to it.

Lower then, kissing down her breastbone, the soft curve of her stomach, pushing her skirt up around her hips. The smell of her arousal makes him half-mad, his vision darkening at the peripheries, and when she spreads her legs he feels drunk with the sight of her. Blackwall kneels before her in supplication, tracing a slow prayer with his tongue. Tanith arches, gasps, hooks her ankles over his shoulders to dig an impatient heel into his back. He sucks gently at the swollen lips of her cunt, laps up her wetness, kisses the creases of her thighs. She is beautiful, blasphemous, the knowing and the tree.

Blackwall wants to draw this out, to make it last, but when her breath catches in her throat he relents. He presses his mouth to her clit, tongue flicking firm and quick over the sensitive flesh, feeling her thighs clamp hard against his skull. She grabs his wrist and guides it low, the keening she makes a greedy thing. He obliges, pushing two fingers inside the velvet heat of her cunt, curling upward, beckoning.

Tanith pulls him in closer, raising her hips to meet him, whining for more. He moans into the damp curls between her legs, fucking her hard and rough with his fingers, the sound it makes an obscenity. She cries out, claws, runs over, and when she comes it lasts an aeon. Her body hums, flesh tightening, toes curling against his shoulders as he carries her through the ripples, the aftershocks, the tiny, involuntary shivers when she finally stills.

“Come here,” she breathes, leaning down to pull him towards her.

Tanith kisses him deep, her knees pressing into his hips, hands reaching between them to unbuckle his belt. There’s a second where he almost stops her. He pulls back and opens his mouth to speak but she’s smiling at him now, her eyes soft, and every pretence of duty leaves him. Then her fingers are wrapped around his cock, guiding him to her, and she smells of the garden in summer, and her throat tastes of salt, and the high sound she makes when he pushes into her is the sweetest thing he has ever heard. For a moment all Blackwall can do is hold her against him, overwhelmed by the feeling of her, the perfect heat.

Then something in him snaps, and he is sinking his fingers into her hips, pulling her closer, wanting her nearer than their bodies will allow, and her hand is under his shirt, clinging hard enough to bruise, and her eyes are heavy, and his heart is racing, and he knows that he will not be forgiven, knows too that he no longer cares. There is communion in this, in the way she speaks his name on an inward breath, in the sweat beading on her chest, in the white tangle of the altar cloth between her fingers.

And all the while she is laughing. Blackwall has never heard a sound so full of joy, so utterly at home with itself. It echoes from the canopy, the high arches of the ceiling, fills this space so often hushed. For all that it should not, it belongs there. Her laughter is a reverent thing. He finds himself laughing with her, into the soft tumble of her hair, letting her delight purge the guilt from him.

She hooks two fingers into his collar when he comes, kissing her name off his lips. He knows a moment of perfect absolution in her, a space so clean and pure he can barely breathe for the beauty of it. When he collapses against her shoulder she wraps herself around him, speaks low words into his ear that he can barely make out. The light shrinks and fades but she is still there, proprietary hands stroking his back, her mouth warm at his cheeks.

He waits for the shame. He waits, and he waits, and it does not come.


End file.
